The energy hole problem is a major concern in the wireless sensor network (WSN) given the uneven energy depletion of the power-constrained sensor nodes. Recently, several studies have incorporated a mobile data collector (MDC) to collect data from sensor nodes where the MDC reaches a set of data collection points (DCPs) to collect data from nearby nodes. This strategy has resolved the underlying cause of unbalanced energy consumption by avoiding the long chain of multi-hop routing. However, in most of the existing protocols, sensor nodes information is relayed to the Base Station (BS) to nominate MDC sojourn points and travel sequence. Such a centralized approach results in a substantial exchange of messages among sensor nodes causing high energy consumption. Moreover, these approaches perceived a uniform data generation rate at sensor nodes while ignoring the limited buffer cache capacity during the MDC path design. In this context, this paper proposes a distributed MDC sojourn point nomination method that significantly improves the message complexity and energy consumption of the WSN. The selected DCPs information is relayed to the BS where a modified Ant Colony Optimization algorithm is applied to construct the MDC traversal path. The performance of the proposed protocol is extensively analysed with some related existing schemes in terms of network parameters like energy efficiency, network lifetime, packet delivery ratio, and end to end delay. Moreover, the scalability of the proposed scheme is evaluated by varying the number of MDC and sensor nodes in the network.

鉴于功率受限传感器节点的能量消耗不均匀，能量空洞问题是无线传感器网络 (WSN) 中的一个主要问题。最近，几项研究结合了移动数据收集器 (MDC) 从传感器节点收集数据，其中 MDC 到达一组数据收集点 (DCP) 以从附近节点收集数据。该策略通过避免多跳路由的长链，解决了能源消耗不平衡的根本原因。然而，在大多数现有协议中，传感器节点信息被中继到基站（BS）以指定 MDC 逗留点和旅行序列。这种集中式方法导致传感器节点之间大量交换消息，从而导致高能耗。而且，这些方法在传感器节点上感知到统一的数据生成速率，而忽略了 MDC 路径设计期间有限的缓冲区缓存容量。在此背景下，本文提出了一种分布式 MDC 逗留点提名方法，该方法显着提高了 WSN 的消息复杂度和能耗。选定的 DCP 信息被中继到 BS，在那里应用修改的蚁群优化算法来构建 MDC 遍历路径。在能源效率、网络寿命、数据包传输率和端到端延迟等网络参数方面，对所提出的协议的性能进行了广泛的分析，并结合一些相关的现有方案。此外，通过改变网络中的 MDC 和传感器节点的数量来评估所提出方案的可扩展性。